


Regulars to the Rescue

by HolyCatsAndRabbits



Series: Mr. Fell's Bookshop ficlets [12]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: BAMF Aziraphale, Chalkboards, Established Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Humor, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Kids to the rescue, M/M, POV Outsider, Shenanigans, the Bookshop to the rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22468645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolyCatsAndRabbits/pseuds/HolyCatsAndRabbits
Summary: The bookshop regulars know that Mr. Fell is an angel. When Mr. Crowley gets mysteriously injured while Mr. Fell is away and unreachable, the regulars rally to save the day. But in doing so, they realize that everybody’s got their own theory about what kind of creature Mr. Crowley is, and thus, how to help him. Vampire? Snake god? Dragon? It’s an interesting discussion, to say the least.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Mr. Fell's Bookshop ficlets [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1500449
Comments: 389
Kudos: 1299





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go! A bittersweet moment: last work in the series. Plus a bonus epilogue that I hope will deliver the happy tears I promised. This one is longer than a ficlet to give us some room for shenanigans. But first I HIGHLY recommend you go back and reread "Are you an angel, too?" (Ficlet #1) really quickly before you read this work. We're bringing the story full-circle here.
> 
> Did you re-read #1? Good. Onward, then:
> 
> Returning bookshop regulars and the ficlets they narrate (many regulars appear in multiple ficlets): *SPOILERS if you haven't read all the ficlets*
> 
> Oliver and Caroline, brother and sister, ages ten and thirteen. In ficlet #1, when they were six and nine, they helped to save Mr. Fell’s life from an attack by Heaven. (Aziraphale and Crowley later made peace with Heaven with Adam’s help.) The kids work in the bookshop as volunteers. Caroline narrates #1 (and this one), Oliver narrates # 11.
> 
> High school kids Audrey, who is trans, (ficlet #3), and her best friend Lloyd, who is gay (ficlet #5). 
> 
> Sam, straight cis man who does Mr. Crowley’s makeup and gives makeup lessons at the bookshop: ficlet #4
> 
> Eli: queer man whose life was saved by Mr. Fell: ficlet #6
> 
> Rylee (ficlet #8), and Lela (ficlet #9): women in an ace relationship. Mr. Crowley protected Lela from being attacked by a man who was following her
> 
> Rebekah: nurse at the hospital where Mr. Fell does his healings: ficlet #10
> 
> (Ficlets # 2 and 7 are narrated by people who don't become regulars.)
> 
> All right, please enjoy the following shenanigans!
> 
> EDIT: This fic is now a podfic by the wonderful kholly! Follow the “other works inspired by this one” link to find it.

It was a normal day at Mr. Fell’s Bookshop, except for two things: first, Mr. Fell was not there, which was expected, and second, Mr. Crowley suddenly collapsed onto the floor, which was not.

Caroline, who was thirteen, was at the front desk. The shop was open, but there hadn’t been a customer in a while. Caroline was reading _The Dream Thieves,_ Book 2 of the _Raven Cycle._ Her ten-year-old brother, Oliver, and Mr. Crowley were repairing an old chess set that they had found somewhere inside the shop, largely in silence, with a scattered comment or two and some laughter. Oliver had been a noisy little kid, but it seemed like since he and Caroline been allowed to start helping out at the bookshop, he’d grown quieter, calmer. Maybe he was getting more mature. Or possibly, Caroline suspected, just more like Mr. Crowley.

When Mr. Crowley fell, Caroline heard the thump of him hitting the floor. Oliver didn’t scream. It was worse: he ran to Caroline and expected her to know what to do.

Mr. Fell was away, some sort of angelic retreat, he’d said when he’d asked them to help Mr. Crowley watch the shop for him. Caroline could handle that, she knew which books to sell and which to keep, she knew how the register worked (in fact, it _didn’t_ work by any mechanical means that Caroline could see, it just sort of did its own thing and produced change when it was needed.) But Caroline didn’t know how to handle _this._

Mr. Crowley’s eyes were closed, he didn’t have a pulse, and he wasn’t breathing. But that didn’t necessarily mean much for someone who wasn’t human. It did mean, however, that they probably shouldn’t call for an ambulance or for their parents (who thought Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley were a delightful human couple), because to anybody else, Mr. Crowley would seem dead. Of course, It was possible that he _was_ dead. But Caroline wasn’t ready to think that yet.

Oliver’s blue eyes were large and round and wet. But he didn’t cry and he didn’t panic. Instead, as Caroline shifted her hand from trying to find a pulse in Mr. Crowley’s still wrist, Oliver caught hold of Mr. Crowley’s sleeve.

“What is that?” he asked. “That wasn’t there before.” As Oliver pulled the sleeve up, Caroline saw a bunch of weird symbols drawn along Mr. Crowley’s arm in black. Oliver looked up at Caroline. “A couple of weeks ago, in that fire, his shirt got burned, remember? He didn’t have these marks.”

“Could be new tattoos.” Caroline moved the shirt aside further, finding the black writing all over Mr. Crowley’s chest as well.

“I guess they could—whoa!” Oliver exclaimed, and the two of them jumped back a little, watching the ink on Mr. Crowley’s arm ripple and move. “Yeah, not tattoos,” Oliver whispered.

Caroline looked down at Mr. Crowley’s still form, willing him to open his eyes, willing him to wake up. “We need Mr. Fell,” she said. But it did no good to say it.

“Wait, Mr. Crowley has a phone!” Oliver exclaimed, and he shifted the mess of the chess board on the table a little and produced a fancy-looking cell phone. “It’s locked, though. I don’t know the password.”

“Well,” Caroline said, “this is the bookshop. Maybe it works like everything else around here.”

Oliver looked down at the phone with a determined gaze. “All right,” he said, in what Caroline realized was supposed to be some sort of authoritative voice, but really just sounded oddly loud, “Phone! Call Mr. Fell.”

Nothing happened.

“Say please?” Caroline suggested. “Or wait, that is _Mr. Crowley’s_ phone.”

“Right, right, I got this,” Oliver assured her, and then he stood up straight, threw out a hip and cocked his head. “Oi, phone!” he said, in what wasn’t actually a terrible imitation of Mr. Crowley’s voice, “I don’t know where the Heaven my angel’s got off to now, probably eating crepes with his nose in a book, but I need to talk to him, so ring him. Now!”

The phone lit up immediately and Oliver was so surprised he nearly dropped it. He and Caroline started at a smiling picture of Mr. Fell beneath a ringing phone icon.

There was no answer.

“Oi, phone!” Oliver said. “My angel’s probably got his own phone turned off or something, doesn’t know a phone from a—a piece of cake, so be sure you make his phone ring!”

The phone seemed to get a little brighter, as if it were indeed trying to help. But there was still no answer. At least not on the phone. Both kids jumped as they heard the door to the bookshop swing open and footsteps rush in.

Caroline had a second to wonder what it would look like to someone to find two children standing over a dead body with a cell phone that belonged to it, but it wasn’t some stranger running to their side. It was Rebekah, one of the bookshop’s regulars. She was wearing hospital scrubs and Caroline remembered with a rush of gratitude that Rebekah was a nurse.

Rebekah came down on her knees by Mr. Crowley immediately, feeling for a pulse, checking breathing. “What happened?” she asked Caroline.

Oliver answered her, in a voice that wavered with a little relief. “Don’t know. He just collapsed.”

Rebekah gently shook Mr. Crowley’s shoulder. “Mr. Crowley?” She looked at Oliver. “What’s his first name?”

“Anthony.”

“Anthony,” Rebekah said loudly. “Can you hear me?”

“He’s got weird symbols on his arm,” Caroline said, pointing, and Rebekah took one look and then unbuttoned Mr. Crowley’s shirt. His entire chest and arms pulsed with slowly moving black writing.

Rebekah sat back on her heels. “Well,” she said. “No idea what that is. You guys?” 

They shook their heads.

“Huh,” Rebekah said. “It was the weirdest thing, I was at work and I just had this feeling that I had to get here, like it was an emergency.”

Another voice spoke up behind them. “Me, too.” Caroline looked up to see a couple more familiar faces. In fact, a group of nine regulars gathered at the bookshop in the next fifteen minutes or so. There was Rebekah, the nurse; a couple of high schoolers who were two grades ahead of Caroline: Audrey and Lloyd, who had skipped out of a Sunday afternoon band practice and driven over; a couple of adult men who had come from work: Eli from a vet’s office and Sam from a theater rehearsal; and two more women: Lela and Rylee, who had apparently been spending their Sunday together. Plus Caroline and Oliver.

Caroline had let herself relax, assuming that a group of five adults and two highschoolers would know what to do. But the only thing everyone agreed on was to make Mr. Crowley more comfortable by laying him on the couch instead of the floor. Rebekah sat next to him, watching for any change. Everyone else started arguing about what to do, suggesting everything from calling an ambulance to trying a ouija board, from fetching a priest to finding a medium, from washing the symbols off to attempting to work some sort of spell with the same symbols for something nobody could agree on.

They may have all been bookshop regulars, but none of them knew the shop as well as Caroline and Oliver, who actually helped run it from time to time. So everyone gave Caroline a surprised look when she dragged over a chalkboard on wheels.

“Mr. Fell has a chalkboard?” somebody asked, and somebody else said, “Of course he does,” and there was a little nervous laughter.

Caroline looked at the group like she had her history class the week before when she was making a presentation on the French Revolution. Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley had helped her with the project, because they had actually been in France at the time (although there was obviously some sort of embarrassing story about the Bastille that they kept to themselves). But this was no different from speaking to the class, Caroline reasoned. If she could do it at school, she could do it here.

All right,” she said, picking up a piece of chalk. “We all know Mr. Fell is an angel.” Everybody nodded. “But we’re not sure about Mr. Crowley, only that he’s _not_ an angel. I don’t think we should try to help him without knowing what he is and what those symbols are, or else we might make it worse.” There were some agreeing noises, especially from Oliver, who gave her a smile that helped Caroline feel braver. “Okay,” she said. “So what do we know? He’s just as old as Mr. Fell, right? Seems to be immortal?” More nods, so Caroline wrote that on the chalkboard. _Immortal._ “Good. What else?”

It was an interesting discussion, to say the least, full of exclamations of surprise and the kind of pleasant gossipy feeling that Caroline had with her friends at school when discussing everybody else’s business. Caroline hadn’t realized quite how much adults still seemed to like such a rude activity, and she wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse. Ten minutes later, the list on the chalkboard looked like this:

_Immortal_

_Magic powers but different from Mr. Fell’s_

_Can walk through fire_

_Snake eyes_

_Can turn into a talking snake: pet-sized or giant_

_Has black wings_

_Mr. Fell calls him “Temptation Incarnate”_

_Mr. Fell’s side/family doesn’t approve of the marriage_

_Possibly has claws_

_Can’t handle a blessed object_

_Feels bad intentions from people_

“I’ve heard Mr. Fell say he was _better_ than an angel,” Rebekah said. “It could just be Mr. Fell being utterly gone on his husband, which we all know he is, but Mr. Fell seemed pretty serious about it.”

Caroline wrote that last: _Better than an angel._ “Okay,” she said. “Suggestions?”

Sam shrugged. “I guess I’ll state an obvious one. Vampire?”

“He can go out in sunlight,” Lloyd pointed out.

“Well, so could Dracula,” Sam countered, and then with a frown, he added, “Not that Dracula was real. Right?”

“I personally didn’t think angels were real,” Rylee said, and they all nodded at that.

“Well, has anybody ever seen Mr. Crowley eat anything?” Audrey asked.

The kids had seen him eat a biscuit once, and that was it, but they’d all seen him drink things. But not blood, though.

“Nobody’s ever come into the hospital drained of blood,” Rebekah told them. “I guess Mr. Crowley could be hiding the bodies...” There were a couple of voices assuring them that Mr. Crowley was not in the habit of killing people, and Caroline and Oliver exchanged a look of clear agreement.

Sam said, “Well, maybe he drinks Mr. Fell’s blood. Consensually, I mean. It would be hard to see bite marks with the collar and bowtie Mr. Fell wears.”

“Maybe angels have different blood from the rest of us,” Audrey said. “So maybe he’s an angel-blood vampire or something. That is something that Mr. Fell’s family would probably not approve of.”

“I saw Mr. Fell hurt once, and his blood looked normal,” Eli said. “I guess it still could be different somehow.”

“This is all good, except don’t vampires burn in fire?” Lloyd asked. “Oliver saw him going into a burning building. And I thought they turned into bats or wolves, not snakes.”

“I just don’t think we know enough about actual vampires to discount it,” Sam said.

Caroline agreed, and she wrote it down: _Vampire? Just for angels?_ “Other theories?” she asked.

“Well,” Lloyd said. “I mean, you put giant snake together with wings and fire-proofing and you get a dragon.”

“If you’re going to go there,” Rylee said, “you could just go all the way to some sort of Snake God or something. Again, I doubt an angel is supposed to marry one of those. And Gods are better than angels, right?”

Caroline wrote down _Dragon? Snake God?_

“Maybe not a dragon but a weresnake?” Eli asked. “I mean, like a werewolf, only—snake? Has anybody ever noticed what phase of the moon it was when they saw the snake?”

No one had, but Caroline was adding _weresnake_ to the board when Lela said, “The thing is, _Temptation Incarnate_ is kind of a specific phrase. Sounds almost Biblical. I mean, there was a talking Serpent in the Garden of Eden.”

“It could just be some sort of angelic humor,” Eli said. “I mean, people that are attracted to men, back me up here. Mr. Crowley is easy on the eyes.” There were a few nods and a couple of laughs at this.

“Right,” Lela agreed, “but when you get the whole _can’t-handle-blessed-objects_ thing, and the fire-proofing, the black wings, the disapproval of the other angels—the Serpent of Eden was some sort of demon or maybe even the Devil. That all fits.”

Oliver spoke up then, for the first time, sounding determined and far more grown-up than Caroline expected him to. “Mr. Crowley has _never_ hurt anyone,” he said firmly. “He saved lives in that fire. We all know he saved Lela on her first night here. Yeah, he’s gruff and he’s rude and he drives like a maniac, but he’s not evil. We all know that. So he _can’t_ be the Devil. Even if he is a giant talking snake, he’s not a _monster.”_

There were quite a few murmurs of agreement, and no objections. So _Devil/Demon_ was the one theory that Caroline did not write on the board.

“So now what?” Rylee asked.

“Well, we’ve narrowed it down a little,” Rebekah said. “If he’s a vampire, he needs blood, although maybe not human blood. For a Snake God, I guess you’d pray. What do you do for a dragon or a weresnake?”

“I think maybe we should try to figure out the symbols on his chest,” Sam said. “We could look through some books in the shop to see if we can find them. And in the meantime, we can try human blood and prayers.”

“Speaking of prayers,” Lela said, “I know Caroline and Oliver tried the phone, but there might be another way to contact Mr. Fell. You can pray to angels, right? I can give that a go. I’m pretty religious, actually.”

“I think today we all are,” Sam remarked, and nobody laughed. 

And, as it happened, nobody got started on any part of the plan either, because they all heard the bookshop door bang open again. Caroline had a fleeting hope that maybe Mr. Fell had returned, but they were not so lucky. 

A group of five people came around the corner. People who were dressed in black, wearing masks, and carrying knives.

“Well,” Rylee said quietly. “I think it might be answer time.”

Without any other words, the younger people—Audrey, Lloyd, Caroline, and Oliver—and Lela were moved behind the rest of the bookshop regulars, back to the couch that held Mr. Crowley. Lela sat down on the couch beside Mr. Crowley and took his hand. Her lips started to move and Caroline figured it wouldn’t hurt to add her own prayer.

_Mr. Fell, please come home!_

Audrey and Lloyd exchanged a look, and then they sneaked off into the stacks. Caroline wanted to follow, but Oliver grabbed her hand, and they positioned themselves in front of Mr. Crowley and Lela. The last line of defense.

Up at the front of the group, Sam asked, “Who are you?”

“Well,” said one of the new people. “Didn’t expect it to have human protectors.”

“They could be under a spell,” someone else said.

“No, it should be incapacitated,” the first person argued. “No spells left.”

“What do you want?” Eli asked.

“We want our prize. And you’re in our way.”

“You’re not welcome here!” Rylee told them.

Caroline missed what was said next because someone tapped her on the shoulder. It was Audrey, and she was handing Caroline something. A letter opener. “Pass it up,” Audrey whispered, and Caroline quickly stepped forward to press the makeshift weapon into Eli’s hand. Lloyd and Audrey had found a couple of other things: a heavy metal bust of somebody Caroline didn’t recognize, a couple of sharp-looking paperweights, and finally, to Caroline’s delight, an actual sword. Lela didn’t break her prayers, but she reached into her coat and pulled out a pocketknife. Caroline opened it and gripped it strongly. 

She needed it sooner than she expected, because suddenly the adults in front of them were moving, and then everyone was fighting.

“Anybody know how to use a sword?” Lloyd shouted, and when nobody answered he said, “Well, guess it’s mine.”

There was a tremendous crash as a bookshelf fell, and then some groaning. Caroline couldn’t tell who had been hit, though. Dust flew everywhere and she coughed. Her hand reached into her pocket and grasped her cell phone. She could always call the police, but she wasn’t sure if that would make things better or worse.

Then she felt Oliver tugging on her hand. “It’s the bookshop,” he said. “Caroline! The _bookshop.”_

“Oh!” Caroline looked around rather desperately. “Right. Okay.” Mr. Fell’s Bookshop. She brought her shaking hands together and folded them the way Mr. Fell would often do, although he usually wasn’t clutching a knife when he did so. “My dear bookshop,” Caroline said in a wavering voice. “We seem to have some unwelcome visitors. Do, ah, be a dear and...help us dispatch them, please?”

Another bookshelf fell and more dust clouded the air. When Caroline could see again, she found that a couple of big red cylinders were rolling toward her across the floor. A memory flashed through her mind: Mr. Fell talking to Rebekah after the fire down the block. _I’m not allowed to be near fire anymore. There was an_ incident. 

“Fire extinguishers,” Caroline gasped. “Fire extinguishers!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

The fire extinguisher quickly became the weapon of choice of the Bookshop defenders, as everyone collectively realized that the shop was full of them. Big, heavy things, good for bludgeoning and also for spraying powder in people’s faces. When the dust literally cleared at last, Caroline saw the invaders sitting in a group against the front desk, their hands and feet tied with whatever the regulars had found—lamp cords, curtain sashes, odd bits of parcel-wrapping string. Everything fell quiet except for the whisper of Lela still sending up her prayers.

There were some injuries. Rebekah was wrapping a cut on Audrey’s arm, and Sam looked like he was going to have a black eye. The invaders had it worse, coughing and looking dazed from being hit in the head with fire extinguishers. None of them were wearing their masks now, and Caroline could see that they were a group of adult men and women.

Eli was leaning against an un-toppled shelf, rubbing his shoulder. “Okay,” he growled, “you did this to Mr. Crowley. Tell us how to bring him back.”

One of the women shook her head (although it looked like it pained her to do so). “No way. It will kill us.”

“He doesn’t kill people!” Oliver snapped. The invaders gave him one of those looks that Caroline hated, something that said _You’re just a little kid, what does it matter what you think?_ But all of the other bookshop regulars backed Oliver up, nodding their heads and agreeing.

“A thing like that?” one of the invaders gasped. “You’re fooling yourselves!”

A short laugh came from Audrey. “Look, the truth is, it doesn’t matter what you think about what Mr. Crowley will do when he wakes up.” The teenager nodded at Lloyd with his sword. “Because _we’re_ a danger to you _now.”_

One of the prisoners finally answered. “We bound him with sigils. So that he will do what we say.” He gave them a wavering smile. “You could go in with us. You could have wealth beyond your wildest—”

The bookshop regulars responded in a loud chorus of a non-child-friendly version of _shut up_ , and the invader shrunk back against the desk under the onslaught.

“How do we break the sigils?” Rylee demanded.

“You have to say another spell,” one of the invaders answered.

Lloyd stepped forward with his sword. “Do it.”

One of the invaders started reciting something in a language that Caroline didn’t recognize. Thankfully, the effect of it was immediately apparent. The marks on Mr. Crowley’s chest and arms started to shimmer and shake and then they faded away. Mr. Crowley’s eyes opened and he took in a shaky breath. He turned his head but didn’t seem to recognize anyone, not even Oliver, hovering at his side. “Aziraphale?” Mr. Crowley gasped.

A gentle, familiar voice answered him. “I’m here, dear. Although it looks as though I’m hardly needed.” If watching Mr. Crowley wake up hadn’t made Caroline almost cry with relief, seeing Mr. Fell would have done it. Lela moved to let him sit down on the couch, and he took his husband’s hand. “Are you all right, my love?” he asked, running a hand over Mr. Crowley’s shoulder where the sigils had been.

Mr. Crowley coughed and sat up a little. “Think so. What’s everybody doing here?”

Mr. Fell gave all of the regulars a delighted smile. “I always put an emergency miracle in place when I leave, to summon help if you need it. Seems to have worked perfectly!” Then Mr. Fell narrowed his eyes at the invaders, who were still sitting against the front desk, their eyes wide and fearful. “The shop’s a bit of a mess, though. Perhaps someone could fill me in?”

Of course, the regulars all talked at once, but they managed to convey the important parts well enough: Mr. Crowley collapsing, everyone arriving, the invaders, the fight.

“I’m so sorry that I was unreachable,” Mr. Fell said. “I’m afraid cell phones don’t work in Heaven, and you can’t sense much from demons there. I was able to hear Lela’s praying though, and got back as soon as I—” He trailed off, looking at their confused faces.

“You can’t sense _what_ in Heaven?” Audrey asked.

Mr. Fell looked just as bewildered himself. “Well, what did you think Crowley—”

After a moment of silence, Caroline tugged the chalk board over. Mr. Crowley and Mr. Fell spent a moment reading it, and then Mr. Crowley said, “Vampire?” in an offended voice. “Not likely. Now, Snake God’s not too bad. And _dragon,_ I rather like that. Don’t think I’ve ever had the wings and snake body at the same time, though. Maybe should try it.” He looked down at Oliver, who was still sitting on the floor by the couch, and gave him a wink. Oliver grinned back at him.

Mr. Fell had pressed his lips together, and then he asked, in what seemed like a carefully controlled voice, “You had this whole list, and no one suggested _demon?”_

“Well, we did—” Lloyd started.

“But Mr. Crowley’s too nice,” Lela finished for him.

Caroline could see Mr. Fell struggle to hold onto his calm expression, but it was no use. He started laughing so hard that his eyes filled with tears. He turned his head to look at his husband, and on seeing his fierce scowl, only laughed louder, his face turning pink with it.

“All right, Aziraphale,” Mr. Crowley growled, as he started buttoning his shirt. “Point made. You’ve had your fun. We still have a problem to deal with, if you’ll recall.” He nodded toward the invaders tied up by the front desk.

They had gone quite pale, which seemed appropriate, but one of them whispered, _“Aziraphale? Like the angel?”_

Mr. Fell looked over at them. He got a mild smile on his face that looked strangely out of place there, because it was _cold._ “You’re right, my dear,” he said to his husband. “We do need to decide what to do with our visitors.”

“Please don’t let it get us!” one of them cried.

Mr. Fell got to his feet. “Who, Crowley?” That smile grew a little wider. “My dear, I regret to say that he's not the one you should be worried about.”

Another of them spoke. “But Aziraphale is an angel, right? You’re an angel?”

“Last time I checked.” Mr. Fell turned to his husband. “I’m sorry to pull rank like this, darling.”

Mr. Crowley was grinning now, and he beckoned to Oliver and Caroline. “No, angel,” Mr. Crowley said, as the kids arranged themselves next to him on the couch. “You go right ahead.”

Mr. Fell nodded. “It is true,” he said, addressing the whole crowd of them, “that Crowley has a rather impressive record as a demon. He tempted Eve in the Garden, and Christ in the wilderness. Some people attribute those acts to Lucifer himself, but I’m afraid that’s a bit of stolen credit. In any case, the thing is that being _Temptation Incarnate_ is a lot more about the whisper in your ear than the knife at your throat. Crowley has never needed much demonic strength.”

Caroline looked to Oliver, to see how he was taking this news, and found that Mr. Crowley was also watching Oliver closely, with an expression of concern on his face. But Oliver just smiled up at him as he always did, with just as much trust. Mr. Crowley looked relieved and ran a hand over Oliver’s hair, mussing it up slightly. And seeing that, Caroline knew that Oliver had been right. Maybe Mr. Crowley had done some things in his past, things far graver than Caroline had ever imagined, but no one who cared so much about what a kid thought of him could be a monster.

Mr. Fell was looking over the carnage of the shop with a frown, and he waved a hand at a fallen bookshelf. It righted itself, books flying off of the floor to arrange themselves in neat rows. “We met in Eden, you know,” Mr. Fell continued. “But I was a guard. A soldier. I don’t get up to that sort of thing anymore, but the point is that they don’t let just any angel stand guard. I got the job because I am a principality.”

“Angelic royalty,” Mr. Crowley spoke up.

“Well,” said Mr. Fell with a tilt of his head. “More or less. In any case, that rank comes with certain...privileges. Abilities.” He righted the other fallen bookshelf with a wave, and then fixed his eyes on the invaders. “The other thing you ought to know,” he said, more gently, “is that, as an angel, I am a creation of love. I am made to love all of God’s works, the universe, this world, and all the living things found here. And I do. But there is no love in all of creation that compares even slightly with what I feel for the one thing that I am not supposed to love. The demon Crowley.” He looked back at his husband and his voice grew soft. “I had been lost and cold and tired and lonely for so long that I thought it was my fate. I thought it was who I was, that I didn’t deserve anything other than to put love out into the world and never feel it come back, not the way I needed it to. Until Crowley.” He turned back to the invaders. “So you see why it makes me a bit tetchy that you bound him and attempted to force him to perform the kind of evil deeds that he’s never had the heart for, demon or not.”

As Mr. Fell went quiet, Caroline could hear one of the invaders mumbling something under his breath.

“Ah-ah,” Mr. Fell said, more sharply than Caroline had ever heard him speak, and the person’s mouth shut with a snap. From how wide his eyes grew, Caroline didn’t think he’d shut it on purpose. It looked like Mr. Fell had done it for him. “I’m afraid you’re wasting your time with angel-binding spells,” Mr. Fell explained. “You’d need an awful lot more than that to control me. But I’d have some quiet anyway, if you please.” The invader nodded shakily.

“I think you should do your thing, angel,” Mr. Crowley said, and his voice was quieter than usual, a little more wavery, although he looked as cool as ever to Caroline. “After all this, they deserve your entire performance.”

“I can’t do that, my dear,” Mr. Fell objected. “The bookshop is full of our friends—” He trailed off, noticing a pleasant smell at the same time that Caroline did. “Is someone making _popcorn?”_ Mr. Fell demanded.

Rylee came out of the bookshop’s little kitchenette with a huge smile on her face, carrying a bowl of popcorn. “You better believe it!” she said. “This is the best show I’ve ever seen.”

Mr. Fell looked displeased, but Mr. Crowley barked out a delighted laugh. The regulars quickly arranged themselves in various chairs and sofas, dragging them around so that they all faced the front desk. Mr. Crowley waved his hand and a couple of more bowls of popcorn appeared, and everyone found themselves holding a cup of soda as well. Oliver grinned at Caroline, wiggling in his excitement.

“All right, we’re set, angel,” Mr. Crowley said. “Hit it.”

Mr. Fell crossed his arms. “You want me to make everyone go blind, is that it?”

“Oh, I forgot!” Mr. Crowley exclaimed. He snapped his fingers and suddenly everyone was wearing a pair of sunglasses, just like Mr. Crowley’s. “Go on, then,” he said.

Mr. Fell rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded like, _You are completely ridiculous._ But there was a hint of a smile on his face, a warmer one now.

As they all watched, Mr. Fell shook his shoulders a bit, and two enormous white wings sprouted out from his back. And then he started to glow. It was faint at first, but then it looked like Mr. Fell actually caught fire somehow, as a blueish-white kind of flame blazed up around him. Mr. Fell’s clothes shifted from of his usual pale suit into a white robe with a gold sash around the waist and golden sandals. Caroline was very glad for the sunglasses by the time that an extremely bright gold circlet appeared around Mr. Fell’s head. It was a halo, she realized. And then Mr. Fell opened his eyes, and Caroline found that he had rather more than two of them now. There were eyes on his face, on his wings, on his body, and they all blazed with gold flame.

The regulars cheered. A couple of the invaders started crying, but they stopped when Mr. Fell spoke to them. His voice was gentle and soft, but also loud in a way that Caroline could more _feel_ than hear.

“Today is the day you turn your lives around,” Mr. Fell said to them. He spread his wings and held out one hand with two fingers raised, as if he were giving them some sort of blessing. “You no longer care for money that you haven’t earned. Instead, you care deeply for those around you who don’t have food, shelter, and freedom. You want to help them. You want to follow a path of charity and love.” Mr. Fell waved his other hand and the bindings on the invaders dropped to the floor. None of them moved, though, and Caroline realized with a touch of fright that their own eyes, unprotected by sunglasses, had all gone pure white. “And you will not remember any of what you did this afternoon,” Mr. Fell finished.

Mr. Fell raised his head and looked out into the bookshop. With a _whoosh_ of power, everything was suddenly set to rights, the books, the furniture, lamps, fire extinguishers all finding their places again. And then a wave of that blue-white fire rushed right over the group of regulars, and Caroline could feel it inside herself, a pleasant warmth, a gentle touch, kindness. That morning, Caroline had gotten a paper cut on one of the books in the shop. As she watched now, it faded away, and she realized what Mr. Fell was doing. She looked up to see that Sam’s black eye had disappeared.

The glow receded again, back to Mr. Fell, and then it began to fade. Mr. Fell’s eyes closed one by one and disappeared and the halo blinked out as well. Eventually it was just Mr. Fell standing there in a robe and sandals and wings, but looking much more like himself. 

The bookshop erupted into cheers and applause again. Mr. Fell rolled his eyes and folded his wings away. With a wave of his hand, he restored his usual clothes as well. 

Meanwhile the invaders had gotten to their feet. They seemed dazed, but their eyes were back to normal. Mr. Fell gently ushered them toward the door. When they left, the regulars cheered once more.

“All right, who wants pizza?” Mr. Crowley asked.

Everyone did, of course. But Caroline looked out the window and noticed that it was already evening. “It’s a school night,” she said reluctantly.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Mr. Crowley said, “what with the blizzard and all.” He nodded to the window and when Caroline looked again the whole world had turned white, like they were inside a snow globe.

Everybody cheered again, especially Audrey and Lloyd, who were also supposed to go to school the next day. Mr. Fell rang Caroline and Oliver’s parents and got permission for them to spend the night in the shop. There was probably some miracle involved in that as well, Caroline suspected. But she was hardly going to argue with it.

Pizza was delivered, safely, Mr. Fell assured them: despite the weather, no one was going to be injured on the roads. Somebody produced a few bottles of champagne, and the younger set was given some too, except that Mr. Fell explained that the alcohol had been miracled out of their share. A chess game started up, as well as a discussion with Mr. Fell about a poet Caroline had never heard of, but she was careful to mark the name. Someone found a TV somewhere and started showing some action movie with a bunch of car chases and helicopter rescues. Oliver loved it, Caroline could tell, although she wasn’t sure how well he could see it through the sunglasses that he was still wearing. Everybody else had taken theirs off, including Mr. Crowley, but Caroline saw him notice that Oliver had kept his on. Mr. Crowley watched him for a second, a funny expression on his face, and then he quickly replaced his own sunglasses as well.

At some point, amid all the popcorn and pizza and champagne and noise, Mr. Fell held up his glass in a toast. “To family,” he said.

They all echoed him. “To family.”


	2. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously if you haven't re-read "Are you an angel too?" yet (Ficlet # 1 in this series), do it now!!

Epilogue: 2115, London

Oliver looked up as his visitors came into the room. “Come in, come in!” he called, shifting a bit in his recliner. He was up and out of the bed today, at least. Not bad for a 102-year-old man. “How are things at the bookshop?” he asked, as he took off the wooden cross he was wearing and dropped it into a drawer, right next to his favorite pair of sunglasses.

Aziraphale (he had long since ceased to be “Mr. Fell” to Oliver) took his customary seat in an armchair. He had updated his clothes exactly once in Oliver’s lifetime, and he now wore a cream-colored suit in a style that recalled the early 2000’s. Crowley, on the other hand, sprawled on the couch beside his husband, was as modern as ever, but still dressed completely in black. “The shop is fine,” Aziraphale answered with a fond smile. “How are you, my dear?”

“Oh, can’t complain.” A knock sounded at the door and a nursing aide in cheery peach scrubs poked her head in. “We’re coming round with biscuits, Father. Would you like one?”

“Oh, I’m afraid my appetite isn’t what it was,” Oliver replied. “But I’m sure Mr. Fell could take care of it for me.”

The aide came into the room with a tin of biscuits. “Oh, Mr. Fell, Mr. Crowley,” she said. “It’s nice to see you again. I’m so glad the Father gets such regular visits from some of his congregants.”

Crowley smirked, but Aziraphale gladly took a biscuit. As the aide left, Crowley repeated an old complaint. “Had to take after his side, didn’t you, _Father?”_

As usual, this set Aziraphale off a bit. “Oh, darling, no,” he said. “Not my side. _Our_ side. Crowley, you’re only a demon in name, you know. You really are the kindest—”

Crowley and Oliver cut him off automatically: “Oh, shut it.”

Aziraphale gave a good-natured sigh.

“ _Demon only in name,”_ Oliver scoffed. “Don’t forget the pranks he pulled when I was in seminary.”

“That was not my fault,” Crowley said, pointing a finger at him. “You went to a place named for Gabriel.”

They spoke in tandem again: “Wanker.”

This time Aziraphale looked displeased and Oliver cleared his throat. “You know, I changed my mind, let’s all have some biscuits.”

Aziraphale miracled them a whole tin from the nursing home’s kitchen and he and Oliver spent the next little while sampling them and trying to guess the slightly unusual ingredients. Eventually they settled on dark brown sugar with a hint of nutmeg. Crowley obliged them with one bite and was smart enough to agree about the nutmeg.

“Of course, I went there because Father Layne was on faculty. He was worth it,” Oliver said.

Crowley nodded. “An exception to his kind. As are you.” He looked away, as he always did when giving compliments.

Oliver smiled. “Do you remember Father Ryan from St. Simon’s?” he asked, brushing crumbs from his chest. “First church I was posted at, in Liverpool? He crossed my mind the other day, don’t know why. I said a couple of prayers for him.”

“Was he the one with the nose?” Crowley asked, sliding his sunglasses up onto his forehead until they caught in his fiery hair. 

“Yep,” Oliver said.

“Love of Leviticus?” Crowley asked.

“Mmm-hmm.”

_“Man shall not lie with man as with woman?”_

“That’s the one.”

“And he had that car he loved so much?”

“Yep.” The two of them broke into laughter.

“May I inquire,” Aziraphale asked politely, “as to what happened to Father Ryan’s car?”

The laughter ceased.

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Not a blessed thing.”

Aziraphale huffed at them. “Yes, I feel safe in assuming it wasn’t a _blessed_ thing.”

Crowley performed a deft change of subject, and the three of them got caught up in other memories, other places, other times when they’d been together, just like this, nearly a hundred years of them in all. A blink to immortal creatures. A lifetime to a human being. It was odd for Oliver to look at the two of them, the angel and demon, unchanging decade after decade, and then look down to see his own hands wrinkled and thin instead of small and smooth like they’d been when he’d first come to the bookshop.

When Oliver’s eyelids started to feel heavy, despite his pleasure in the visit, Aziraphale noticed. He always did. “We’ll see you tomorrow,” he said softly.

Oliver couldn’t help smiling. “That’ll be three days in a row. That close, am I?”

Aziraphale tried to smile back, but he couldn’t quite manage it. His eyes looked a little wet. Crowley wouldn’t look at Oliver at all.

Oliver spoke reassuringly. “I always figured you two wouldn’t be able to give me much past the age of 100.”

“Human bodies don’t always cooperate despite our best intentions,” Aziraphale said bravely. He put a gentle hand on Oliver’s arm and Oliver felt a familiar angelic essence flow through him. “That’s the last of the pain, there,” Aziraphale told him. “Should hold til tomorrow. Oh, and I brought you this.” It was a book, of course, suddenly appearing in Aziraphale’s hand. _The House at Pooh Corner._ “Large print edition,” Aziraphale assured him.

Oliver squeezed the angel’s hand. “Aziraphale, there’s a lady in 503 going downhill too. Maybe you could stop in? Her mind’s stuck pretty far back in the past at this point, she’s really focused on her childhood dog, Maggie. Border collie, I think. Farm dog. Anyway, I think if she knew Maggie was waiting for her, she’d be more at peace.”

“Of course, darling,” Aziraphale whispered. He leaned forward to press a kiss to Oliver’s forehead. Crowley met Oliver’s eyes finally, just for a second, before replacing his sunglasses and silently following Aziraphale out of the room.

oOo

Oliver woke later that night to find that his room was filled with a gentle golden glow. “Aziraphale?” he asked, in a voice that was a little shakier than he had hoped it would be. “Is it time?”

Aziraphale was sitting on the end of the bed, looking more like his actual self than he usually did: surrounded by the warm angelic glow that came from beneath his skin, and backed by two brilliant white wings that were large enough to drag their longest feathers on the floor beside the bed.

“It's time for your decision, my dear,” the angel said.

Oliver managed to drag his body into some sort of semi-comfortable sitting position, and he could feel a little ethereal magic soothing away any pain that caused.

“I have everything arranged on my end,” Aziraphale told him. “But the choice is still yours, Oliver.”

“Don’t suppose you asked Caroline what she thinks? I know you’ve been to visit her up there.”

“I have, and she’s behind you whichever way you decide.”

Caroline had passed ten years earlier, surrounded by her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. “Of course she is,” Oliver said with a smile.

“You know,” Aziraphale said, giving Oliver one of his fondest looks, “I couldn’t have offered you this if you hadn’t lived your life the way you did. I don’t mean being a priest. I mean being _you_. Always putting others ahead of yourself, so rarely failing in your compassion and empathy. And you did that on your own, not knowing that this choice would come to you someday.”

“Not hard to grow up that way when your unofficial dads have got the biggest hearts in all creation.”

Aziraphale laughed. “Don’t let Crowley hear you say that.”

“Have I ever?” Oliver could feel his smile fading. “How is he?”

Aziraphale looked at him with an aching compassion, but he said, “I’m sorry, Oliver, but you know I can’t tell you that. You can’t decide this based on anyone’s feelings but your own. He doesn’t know about this, and depending on how you choose, he never will.”

Oliver looked away from Aziraphale, his gaze finding the demon-shaped depression in his couch cushions, worn there over years of visits. Despite the fact that he was still partly under the bed covers, Oliver felt cold. “If I go to Heaven like Caroline, I will never see him again.”

“No.” Aziraphale’s voice was soft, but carried an angelic weight to it. A finality.

Oliver grinned suddenly, stretching his weary arms out. “Well, then. My decision’s the same as when you first brought it up ten years ago.” He held out his hand to the angel at the end of his bed. “Come on, you old devil, let’s do this.”

oOo

Oliver couldn’t stop looking down at his hands. The wrinkles and thin skin had vanished as if old age had been a dream, and here he was, standing outside the bookshop on his own two feet, no walker or wheelchair needed now. It was going to take a little time for him to get used to it, because he _had_ aged, and the world had aged with him, but now, only the world showed the difference. Oliver would never show it again.

He looked about forty now. His hair was sandy brown again, and full. There had been one change, though, that had shocked Aziraphale. Oliver didn’t see that look from Aziraphale very often, and he laughed when he found out the reason, because he himself was not terribly surprised. Oliver’s eyes had always been blue. They were some sort of hazel now, and very, very bright. An almost unearthly gold.

Oliver had managed to snag his sunglasses from his room before they’d left the nursing home, of course, and it was a simple thing to put them on to avoid stares in the street.

And then there was the bookshop, and inside was Crowley. Oliver watched him a moment through the front window, seeing what Aziraphale had needed to hide from him. Crowley was pacing the floor, restless and uneasy, his shirt wrinkled and hair unkempt. He looked exhausted.

“He hasn’t slept in a few weeks,” Aziraphale said softly. “He’s waiting for me to come back so that we can go to the nursing home. He knows it’s supposed to happen this afternoon. You, I mean. Passing on. Oliver, I—” He pulled the younger man into a hug, which Oliver returned whole-heartedly. “I’m so glad you chose the way you did,” Aziraphale said, with a bit of a sob. The angel was slightly shorter than Oliver, and Oliver pressed a kiss to his white curls.

When he was ready, Oliver took off his sunglasses and pushed open the heavy bookshop door. Crowley turned. Oliver had never seen the demon go pale like that. He had _never_ seen Crowley remove his own sunglasses to be able to see better, but he did it now.

“Aziraphale,” he breathed, his own golden eyes passing from Oliver to his husband and back again. _“How?_ _No._ No, they’d never have agreed to this. Not for us.”

Aziraphale gave him a teary smile. “Oh, my dear. It’s just—I couldn’t—” His voice broke. “You have so much love in you, Crowley, and once you started to share it openly with me, you started to share it with others as well, and you didn’t know not to get _attached._ I knew when Oliver was ten that you'd never be able to say goodbye. I knew that I would never be able to watch you lose a son.”

Aziraphale got a look on his face that Oliver knew well, the strange sharpening of his features that happened only when the angel was revealing that he was, in fact, a great deal more clever than he usually let himself seem. Crowley knew that look as well, and Oliver could see realization dawning on his face.

“After things calmed down between us and Heaven,” Aziraphale went on, “with Adam’s help—I was able to make some...overtures. So, for the last ninety-some years I’ve been doing the odd favor for those up there, as the opportunity arose. All those angelic retreats were something other than what I told you, I’m afraid. I racked up points with Uriel, Sandalphon, quite a few for Michael, she’s really not that bad, you know. Even Gabriel, eventually. And so I was able to call in my debts for this. It’s quite rare, but there is some precedent for it, other deserving humans.”

Crowley made a sort of croaking noise. “You’ve been _—for ninety years?”_

“He’s a right bastard, isn’t he?” Oliver asked.

And that was when the clock turned all the way back, to the beginning of their story, when Oliver had been a child, and Crowley had been too tall to speak to him properly unless he came down to his knees. Oliver hadn’t been restored all the way back to childhood, but Crowley’s legs folded anyway and he landed rather gracelessly on the floor. _"Oliver,"_ he whispered, in a tone that Oliver had _never_ heard before, not from Crowley, not from the demon who felt everything and showed everything but only if you had learned how to see past sunglasses and decipher silence.

Oliver came forward quickly, and then they were both on the floor, with Crowley’s arms so tightly around Oliver that he could barely breathe. Not that he needed to anymore. Slowly, Oliver unfurled a pair of very large, brand new white wings and wrapped them around the demon.

“You’re stuck with me now, you old softie,” Oliver whispered. “Because I’m an angel, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I think this epilogue is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. I just wanted to give little Oliver a hero figure in Crowley, but it turned out that I gave Crowley a son and then of course, I couldn't take him away. 
> 
> ALSO look I ended the series with (more or less) the same line that started the series and even spoken by the same character, how cool is that, people?
> 
> Seriously thank you so much to everyone who has read and shared and given kudos and commented on this series. This has been such a rewarding experience for me, getting to meet you all and share this bit of the GO universe with you. There has already been one fabulous in-universe work for this series written by another author ("Angel's Favor" by PinkPenguinParade, linked to Are You An Angel, ficlet #1), and there has been some beautiful fan art by Patolozka (linked to ficlet #1). If anybody wants to add another adventure or more art to this series, you have my blessing. I have especially heard people speculating about what happens to the feather that Crowley gives Caroline in the first ficlet. Does she ever need to use it? Does she pass it down to her kids, like people do in "Angel's Favor"? If anybody (or multiple people) want to write that up, please do! We are all welcome at this bookshop. We are all regulars. <3 
> 
> Update: a new in-universe fic has been written: Partaking of the Divine by JoyAndOtherStories!! It's linked to this work, Regulars to the Rescue. <3 <3
> 
> Love,  
> Dannye
> 
> PS: A note about Father Layne (from ficlet #7). Everyone (including me) loves Father Layne and asked for him to come back into the series. Now I can finally tell you that the reason he couldn’t was that he was written as understanding that Mr. Crowley was a damned soul, which would have given away the ending if he was in this last piece. And so he couldn’t be a regular. I put in a mention of him, but he couldn’t reappear. Sorry! However, Father Layne reappears in "Unlucky Omens": https://archiveofourown.org/works/24074503 Same character, different universe.  
> 
> 
> Find me on tumblr [HolyCatsAndRabbits](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/holycatsandrabbits)  
> Twitter [@DannyeChase](https://twitter.com/DannyeChase)  
> Facebook [Dannye Chase](https://facebook.com/DannyeChase)  
> and Instagram [dannye_chase](https://www.instagram.com/dannye_chase/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Partaking of the Divine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22747429) by [JoyAndOtherStories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoyAndOtherStories/pseuds/JoyAndOtherStories)
  * [[Podfic of] Regulars to the Rescue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24032959) by [kholly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kholly/pseuds/kholly)




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